


The Secret Side of Ginny Weasley, by luna lovegood

by anniebibananie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, F/F, Journalist!Luna, Modern Era, footballer!ginny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: Ginny is a famous footballer. Luna is a journalist. They find the article together (amongst other things).
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 8
Kudos: 84





	The Secret Side of Ginny Weasley, by luna lovegood

**Author's Note:**

> wanted to write a little something for femslash february, so I thought why not go back to the fandom that made me. enjoy this little, fun linny fic <3

“Aren’t you supposed to start with easy questions?” Ginny shifted in her seat, and the movement peeled the back of her thighs from the vinyl booth with a sharp slap of sensation.

Luna stared back at her—her wide eyes and stable gaze making her look alien-like. Maybe more like a nymph in the right light as the sun through the window glittered over her hair and big, golden hooped earrings. 

All Luna had said in the email was  _ Pick the place. Somewhere you’re comfortable, and I’ll be there.  _ Ginny had assumed the comfort extended to her clothes, not that she would have dressed up anyways, so she was in track shorts and a faded  _ Chudley  _ t-shirt she was sure she’d stolen from Ron some time way back. 

“You think  _ Why do you play football? _ is a tough question?” Luna kept staring, eyes unblinking. 

Ginny shifted. “Yes!” She could feel her cheeks flushing. “I mean… no, it isn’t. You’re confusing me.” 

“You think it’s a confusing question?” she asked. Her voice was pitchy, mostly high, and it stayed bizarrely open as she spoke. Like there was barely anything holding her voice to the ground, a balloon that with a simple cut would just keep floating into the sky until it was a near invisible dot. 

“You make me nervous,” Ginny blurted. 

Luna gave her a little smile then, but it wasn’t the type of little smile that seemed to be trying to keep the bigger smile at bay. It seemed more like Luna was happy—happy when the world surprised her, and it surprised her a lot because she was looking for it to. Like right now, Ginny had given her that brief rush of elation. 

“I like when people tell the truth,” she said with a small nod. The hoops swung beneath her lobes, catching the light along with her hair with an extra bright sparkle. 

_ Transcendent,  _ Ginny thought.  _ She’s transcendent.  _

“I don’t have much time for lies,” Ginny said. That was true. Ever since she was little she could remember telling her brothers off when they were wrong, putting them in their place to no thought that she was younger or littler or the only girl. 

If she had a pence for every time she’d said  _ Don’t be a prat, Percy  _ or slapped Fred and/or George across the side of the head for being idiots, then she would have never had to pursue a football career at all. She could be swimming in a pool of all that money. 

She would have pursued it anyways, obviously, because she loved the sport, and she was damn  _ good  _ at it (Ginny loved being damn good at things, almost as much as Hermione did, which was probably why they’d gotten on so well once they simply learned they could be damn good at different things and still be friends). 

“No?” Luna prompted. Her hand hadn’t roamed back to her notepad, so Ginny could almost pretend this was two friends getting a meal. Luna dipped forward and sucked from the straw pulling at her soda, her hands still laid flat on the table top. 

“No. I’m not going to let things slide to make others comfortable. They can face up to their lies or bullshit.” Ginny winced at her own crassness, but then again—what had she just said? It was the truth. She liked the truth. 

“Why do you play football?” Luna asked again. 

Ginny had no trouble answering it this time. “Because I’m good at it, and I think it’s fun.” 

Luna nodded, satisfied. She pulled her notebook closer and jotted down a note, and then she set her pen back down and set her blue orbs on her instead. “Should we order food? I could go for some chips.” 

Ginny smiled easily. “Sure.” 

* * *

Between the two of them, they hadn’t exactly held back. Ginny was starving. It was a day off from practice, but she’d still found herself talked into a pick-up game with her brothers (though don’t tell her coach that… she could get in trouble), and she’d pretty much only had enough time to jump in the shower, throw her hair up, and get on her way to the diner she’d told Luna to meet her at. 

Ginny liked the diner because it was never filled, the servers barely wanted anything to do with you beyond getting your order, and they never tried to edge you along if you were there for too long. When she wanted some alone time she sometimes came with a book, and she’d order whatever she wanted and stayed until she’d eaten every bite and drank every sip. 

Luna had ordered tea and a large plate of chips, which struck Ginny as odd, but who was she to judge? She’d ordered a burger, a side of vegetables, and a brownie sundae (again, her off day). 

“What’s going to be your angle?” Ginny asked with still a few bites of burger in her mouth. 

Luna raised her brows minutely. Her hands held a single, thick chip which she was pulling through different mixes of condiments on her plate. Through red, through white, through brown. “I don’t have an angle.”

“So you haven't figured it out yet?” 

“No.” Luna took a bite, and unlike Ginny she took the time to swallow before continuing. “I don’t have angles. I just write about people and things. Easy.” 

“Huh.” Ginny appraised her, and she found Luna seemed completely genuine about it. 

Ginny had been angled in her short time as an openly gay, female football star and usually as some sort of low-maintenance tom boy (which she guessed wasn’t far from the truth), and she’d also been heralded as  _ a no-nonsense footballer removed from the constraints of womanhood,  _ which Ginny hadn’t really understood _what_ they were trying to get at with that one. 

She didn’t like painting her nails, it didn’t mean she didn’t like being a  _ woman.  _ People always wanted to make it a gender statement, when in reality Ginny was just sort of… playing the sport she liked and existing. Maybe she  _ should  _ be making more of a statement and use her celebrity for good, but seeing how the media misconstrued it when she wasn’t even  _ trying  _ she was scared of what might happen when she did. 

Whatever, it wasn’t really the current point. The current point was Luna was a breath of fresh air. 

“How’d you get stuck with me?” Ginny asked. 

“I didn’t get stuck with you. I asked for you.” Luna popped another chip into her mouth. Ginny waited as patiently as she could. “I made some of the real sport fanatics mad in the office, but my editor thought I would bring a fresh flare to it all.”

“Huh.” Ginny really hoped Luna wasn’t tallying all of these huh’s up, or that her angle would include something about how  _ inarticulate  _ she was. “Have you ever watched me play?”

Luna nodded. “I watch all the games.” 

Ginny resisted the urge to huh again. She just found Luna sort of fascinating and unknowable, which seemed stupid when she thought it because Luna was nothing if not transparent. She was honest, open, and yet there was something about her that seemed sort of out of reach. Maybe it was something you had to earn. She could be okay with that. 

“You watch any other sports?” Ginny put down her burger—which arguably only had a few bites left at this point—and set her elbow on the table top, resting her chin on her palm. 

Her head tilted to the side, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. She leaned forward as if conspiratorially, though her voice stayed at the same volume. “I do have to admit, I’ve taken a liking to American Hockey. I don’t love all the violence, but when they skate down the ice sometimes it looks like they’re flying. Beautiful.” 

_ You are too,  _ Ginny thought, then internally slapped herself because she was not some bleeding romantic like Bill or her mother (who, she would add, she had caught watching  _ soaps  _ together when she visited last Sunday). Luna was doing her job. Nothing more. 

Ginny just didn’t find that many people interesting, honestly. That was something her and Hermione had also bonded over. Most people were pretty surface deep and only a rare few ever had anything to say that was genuinely interesting or surprising. 

So she liked this surprise of a woman—unexpected and forthright. She wasn’t ready for this interview (that had stopped feeling like an interview from the second Ginny had answered honestly) to end. 

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Ginny asked. Her eyes darted to her still unfinished dessert and burger. “When we’re done, I mean.” 

Luna smiled. It wasn’t the smaller one from before, this one was like a gift all its own. Wide and bright. “Of course.” 

_ Of course.  _ Like it was as simple as that. 

* * *

“Off the record,” Luna began as they walked down main street. She hopped onto the edge of a bike rail, taking a tentative step forward before hopping back down to the solid surface of pavement. The fringes of her jacket spread wide as she opened her arms as if to say  _ ta dah.  _

“Off the record?” Ginny prompted. They fell in step beside each other again. 

“Yes.” Luna nodded. “Off the record, were you really dating Pansy Parkinson?”

Ginny snorted out a laugh. “Where’d you hear that?” 

“At the office earlier today.” Luna paused. “I interviewed Pansy Parkinson when her new fashion line came out. She’s taken a lot of environmental precautions in her production, which is quite admirable when you take in the bottom line of it all.” 

“That’s… good.” Hair had fallen from her ponytail, and Ginny pushed it behind her ears haphazardly. “I never dated Pansy Parkinson. Thought about it, but we would have killed each other. She’s cool, though. Everyone thinks I’m dating every woman I’m seen with, probably because they think it’s hot or something, I don’t know. Why you ask?”

Luna shrugged. “I was curious if you had someone.”

“I have lots of someones,” Ginny said. “I have my best friend Hermione, and my brothers and family, and I have Harry.”

“And they’re all supportive?” Luna asked. 

Ginny paused as the cars rushed past, and they waited for the lights to change so they could cross. “We still off the record?” 

Luna nodded. 

“They’re all supportive, but they worry about me. I travel a lot, and my team is great but most of them have their own lives and families to worry about. I’m tough, though, don’t go worrying.” 

“That’s obvious.” 

“Are  _ you  _ dating Pansy Parkinson?” Ginny asked, though it was obviously a tease. 

Luna laughed, the sound similar to bells but something rustier too. “No. I recently got out of a long relationship with a boy named Neville, who is quite lovely. We went to the plant festival just last weekend together.” 

“If he’s quite lovely, why did it end?” Ginny didn’t really feel that the question was all that abrasive for either of them—two honest people, just letting themselves be who they were. The lights finally changed, and the two kept walking forward. 

It was clear they weren’t walking anywhere in particular, but there was something  _ quite lovely  _ about walking nowhere in particular with someone you fancied and admired. 

“Things come to an end sometimes,” Luna said. 

Ginny snorted. “Don’t get philosophical just to avoid a question.” 

There was a sparkle in Luna’s eyes like she’d been caught. “We weren’t ever going to be forever, but it was fun.” She paused, contemplative. “I’m fun for a while, but manic pixie dream girl does get a bit overplayed at some point, doesn’t it?” 

“You seem real to me,” Ginny said. “Manic pixie seems a bit of a downplay, don’t you think? Like calling me the butch tom boy? We're all more than our more prevalent cliche.” 

Luna laughed again, and it was just as beautiful as the last time. “I’m supposed to be interviewing  _ you. _ ”

“And yet you went off the record to ask about my love life. I don’t know what that says about your professionalism,” Ginny joked. 

Ignoring her, Luna reached out for her hand and tugged Ginny behind her into an open door to their right. 

“See, ignoring it still,” Ginny added, letting herself be pulled forward.

* * *

The open door led into a small art studio. It wasn’t something Ginny would ever find herself doing on her own, but it offered a nice excuse to keep walking beside Luna. 

“I feel like I’ve barely answered anything good for you? Do you even have an article?”

Luna hummed as her eyes stayed on the painting in front of them. It was abstract, but she thought it was probably supposed to look like the sea. There was a dot of red toward the middle, though, that she had no idea the purpose of. Luna seemed to be staring at it very intently, as if it was the missing puzzle piece she needed. 

“I have sound bytes.” 

“And what will you do with them?” 

Luna eyed her over her shoulder, as Ginny was a pace or so behind her. “You’re allowed to read the article before it goes to print, Ginny, but I won’t be telling you anything until you see it for yourself. Have faith.” 

Ginny wouldn’t say she struggled with faith any more than the average person, but it wasn’t something easy either. Faith required… trust, it required letting things out of your hands. Ginny liked getting the job done herself. 

She would trust Luna, though. Not only because she had no other options, but also because she  wanted  to. Ginny had felt at the very least a little bit  _ seen _ by Luna, and she had the feeling the article would show that. Unless she was off base and there was— _ faith, _ she interjected her own thought . _ Trust.  _

“Okay,” Ginny agreed. 

Luna held her hand backward, waiting for Ginny to grab it to tug her forward. “Now come look at this, why don’t you? It holds all the secrets of the universe. Can’t you see it? Just right at the edges?” 

Ginny squinted. “Not in the least.” 

“Hm.” Luna looked at her with a soft smile. “Guess it’s up for interpretation. Maybe you'll see it later."

“Are all your interviews like this?” Ginny asked. 

“Ginny,” Luna began, “I’ve held your hand near three times now. This isn’t like all my interviews.” 

“You didn’t hold Pansy Parkinson’s hand?” Ginny was mostly teasing.

“Pansy Parkinson met me at an upscale cafe, and we were done in exactly a half hour.” Luna hummed again. “No hand holding.” 

“So it wouldn’t be entirely unprofessional if I asked you to hang out again?” Ginny was smiling too much for her own good, she couldn’t seem to tamp it down. 

“No, it still would be, but yes.” Luna took a step away, moving them toward another piece of art. She turned quickly, hair floating around her, lips tilted in amusement. “But I’m going to write an unbiased article.” 

Ginny, for the first time today, reached out for Luna’s hand. She gave a gentle squeeze. “Sure. That seems fair.” 

Luna squeezed back. 

* * *

**_The Secret Side of Ginny Weasley_ **

_ By Luna Lovegood _

_ From the moment Ginny walks into the diner—a quiet place where no one would possibly care if you’re a footballer or the queen of England herself—she has an air about her that makes it clear she has  _ no  _ airs.  _

_ “Sorry, I’m late,” Ginny says.  _

_ She is, in fact, exactly on time. Later, she explains this away: “I come from a big family, which means we were pretty much always late anywhere we had to go because there was one of us running behind. I try to make a point of always being ten minutes early to everything, sorta to make up for all those lost minutes.”  _

_ This is a trend for Ginny Weasley. Not her being late, but her revealing near anything you might want to know. She is an open book once you’ve asked politely for a look inside. She answers things honestly, insightfully, but without much pause.  _

_ “If people think too long, it means they’re funneling what they’re saying through all these different filters. I don’t want to become a diluted version of myself, so I just… don’t.”  _

_ “Your PR team doesn’t mind?” I ask.  _

_ She shrugs. Ginny shrugs a lot, as if she can’t really be bothered by most of what the world has to say when it comes to her. “They’ve learned it’s how I am. They didn’t seem to mind once they saw I wouldn’t cause them any trouble.” _

_ We talk through her string of recent wins, her pick-up games with her brothers, and how she started watching football before she could walk ( _ Presumably _ , she says with a small laugh, I _ can’t actually remember that far back _ ). It’s clear why she’s made a household name for herself over the last few years.  _

_ It’s because she’s transparent, and… she’s  _ good _at what she does. Or so that's how she puts it_ _. _

_ When I ask why she plays the sport, she answers simply, “Because I’m good at it, and I think it’s fun."  _

_ Weasley makes  _ everything _ fun when you’re doing it with her, not because she has to turn everything into a big show, but because she perceives the world exactly the way her eyes see it and has no problem letting you in on the secret. If she has any secret side to her, it’s that.  _

_ (Continued on Page 34) _

**Author's Note:**

> let's hang out on tumblr if you want: [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


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